More Frustrating than funny

It is just a reality that many of the things we experience are truly more frustrating than funny. It is a simple truth that culture shock is a reality. Many of the things we have experienced this week have humor but the burden of them has made the humor marginal.

I have to say that one of my most frustrating issues this past week has been in the area of giving and getting directions. In this country there are few if any street signs. The ones that do exist should not because no one notices them and no one can remember the names of the streets even if they live on them. So imagine trying to give directions to a man on the phone who speaks english only slightly and even that is mixed with french. He has to come from the

middle of Kigali to our district (suburb) in order to set up our internet. He calls me on the phone and says he is on his way. My directions are like this. "Okay, where are you"? His response is in french since the word hello did not clue him in that I was english. The fact that I did not say bonjour did not register to him. He says, "I'm on the road to the Senate". Fortunately I know that road. I send him on his way in the direction of a small grocery store and finally a round about that he does recognize but that is the easy part. Now it is time for the dirt roads. The road does not have a name so we say Niboye road because that is the district that the road cuts in half. After that the exact instructions are, "go 2/3 of the way to the end and go down the mountain until you reach more dirt roads with more small markets on the corner. In Tyler it would be like telling someone to go to the corner with the bank on it and turn left. I finally had to give up and go find him. However I'm finally over the nostalgia of the bumpy dirt roads and I'm tired of being stared at as I bounce all over the road when I drive. I did find him and finally I have email.

The blessing this week is that I was finally able to finish my application for visas and was able to turn them in. This was on my third attempt. The first day it took all morning to get my documents (marriage certificates, medical license and all the kid's birth certificates) copied and notarized. The immigration office closes at noon. The second day we arrived at the immigration office and I discovered that I was supposed to fill out my applications online but had not. God intervened again. Charles, the amazing man at ATN who is in charge of helping us get "official" was able to coerce someone to print them for me so I could fill them out. After scurrying to complete them before our number was called (we failed and had to get a new number) we walked to the desk and after reviewing the documents the agent said we could not proceed because the back ground in our photos was too grey. It was not nearly white enough. Again the word impossible (to which there is no answer, you have to just hang your head and walk away). We had to leave, go get all the kids and take them all to downtown to get pictures taken. I had to ask them to take them twice because they were really bad the first time. She took, "needs to have white back ground" to mean "needs to be washed out with really bright flash".

I prayed last night that God would keep the rules the same today. Here in Africa rules change from day to day and from person to person. I prayed that the person I encountered would follow the official rules and be a person of peace. I got up early and was the first person there and when I approached the agent and gave her the applications she said her name was the same as my daughter, Grace. I told her about Grace and how she got her name (I thought she would cry) then I figured since she was stuck there and appeared peaceful I would just preach to her about the meaning of the word grace while she did my paperwork. In the end I was able to finish the process and now I just have to wait for final approval and we will all be "official".

In addition we were able to go to church with our neighbors this week. The service was three hours long (no classes or breaks) and the kids were almost dead by the end. So was the lady whose job it was to keep the kids in line. The kids don't sit down front but have to sit at the back of the room under the eye of the "kid Nazi". I kind of liked it. She had to keep bopping Samuel to get him to stay seated. Don't blame him though since he is not used to such a long service. The joy in it was just the walk to church. The neighbor kids and our boys just love playing together. Aaron is so happy to have them near during the day.

(blurry but Aaron and Samuel playing soccer with neighbors)

(walk to church with neighbors)

We had a hard week and this was just the beginning of our struggle but we are blessed by God's constant affirmation of our presence in Rwanda and we enjoy seeing them come to us over and over. Please pray that he will continue to lay these in front of us and continue to pray that in all that we do we find people of peace in which we can form relationships with and prayerfully invite them to discover God with us.

Blessings to all of you.

Brian

p.s. One last funny image. We had to have our gate fixed this week because the hinge broke off. I had to call the landlord to send a crew to fix the all steel gate that weighs about 500 lb. When they arrived they brought their welder and needed a place to plug it in. When I walked in the gate I noticed a wire (not extension cord but real romex wire) with no ground leading to my back door. When I looked down this is what I found. No plug, just stripped the wires and stuck them in the outlet. Try this in the states.

Funny or Frustrating??

When I left for Rwanda I committed at least to my self that I would not make my blogs downers and a collection of pity posts.

God has granted me a different eye to see the difficult things through has made me more capable of seeing the humor in our new lives.

There are many things I have seen and experience this week that have made me both laugh and pout (at the same time).

We sent out our newsletter last week and mentioned my analysis of the correlation between standing in line and driving in Rwanda. Well the two came together this week as I was able to buy a 4WD vehicle and had to spend all day in the Rwanda Revenue Authority (and the bank, again). The RRA is sort of a mix of the DMV and tax authority. You have to go to the RRA one day and get a tax ID followed the next day by meeting the owner of the vehicle at the RRA at the car check place. This is the semi equivalent of an inspection. However, it is clearly an inconvenience to all involved. The inspector looked at the tires then opened the hood and leaned in to look at the engine block and left. We paid the fee and left. We finally made it through the maze of back roads that only my Rwandan friends could navigate and settled at the big RRA building. I have to say I was impressed. My frame reference is standing in line at the Cotton belt building in Tyler on a late August day. The interior air temperature was far cooler in this building than the Cotton Belt building. However, despite how slow the line moves at the Cotton Belt at least it was a line. There was no line here. It was a room of chairs, no "take a number" sign or device. I had no idea were our place in the queue was but thankfully my Rwandan cohorts knew how to keep track but again this was arbitrary and when a seat at the desk emptied the race was on. It took us about 4 hours to complete this part of the process.

In the end it was a good experience because it has typically been much worse for others and I was able to finish the process in less than one day and that is universally considered a miracle.

Other things that make me frustrated. RED DIRT!

When we left Oklahoma to move to Tyler in 2002 I felt almost confident that I was leaving behind red dirt for good. No more red sox, no more red pants legs, no more red mud in the shower and no more red dirt on my floor. I have all those now and much more with 4 kids. I am generally tired of being dirty.

Another amusing thing this week was related to the bike I have been riding. I have been riding Marty's bike or walking to the center we do most of our work out of and to begin with I get heckled by many of the workers on the street. The local government is redoing the ditch on our street and paving it with stone. A side note is that the 5 foot deep by 4 feet across ditch is dug by hand and the stones are broken up by hand to fit the area needed. This process takes about 50-70 workers. They watch me ride that bike many times per day and each time they act like it is the first time they have ever seen me. I must give them the comedy break they need to make it through the day. Well any way, I am also not used to Marty's bike which has straps that keep your feet on the pedals (competitive mountain bike). I always keep my right foot out so I wont fall over if I have to stop suddenly. Well I arrived at my destination I kicked my right foot over and forgot that my left foot was tied in and thus had nothing to stop me but the ground. The two old me across the street now have enough material to make them the life of the party all week.

We have been trying to get into our house every day this week. Every time we meet the land lord there is just a little more work to be done. The last 2 days we were to meet him and get the keys to the gate but he is either not there or does not have the keys. I was stuck at the house for 2 hours with the young man that has been guarding the house for the landlord. He does not speak English, the landlord only speaks French and Kinyarwandan and I only speak 30 words or Kinyarwanda and unless I suddenly have the need to ask him to put two blue pens on his head then our communication is over quickly. (However to my surprise, knowing how to say blue and pen and give me turned out to be great when the inspector at the previously mentioned RRA tried to steal my blue pen). It has been two days and I have no ammunition left. I still don't have keys to my gate and thus cannot get in. The final solution is to just go down to the security guard service tomorrow and hire the guard and when he shows up tomorrow night all will suddenly be resolved.

The money is a funny thing. We still look at the Rwandan Franc as play money. Now can you not when the coins stick to your daughters magnetic necklace. Very high iron content in their coins. You go to the store and you are kind of craving some chocolate since you have not had any decent quality chocolate in nearly 3 weeks. You look at the price and forget to convert it before your old addiction blinds you so when you finally eat half of it and then when you come back into your right mind you realize you paid 3 dollars for a 3-4 oz candy bar with a brand name on it. That's when you decide chocolate is no longer your weak spot.

I'd like to tell you the lighter side of Kristin learning to drive a very large, standard transmission, Land Cruiser (diesel) but she is likely going to read this and that would be bad news for me. (She did awesome by the way, love you dear).

Electricity. Simply put, you buy it at a store like you bye minutes on a pay as you go cell phone. You go to a variety of small stores, called a duka and pay for as much electricity you can either afford or the amount you think you might use in a month. Yes, you get to keep your electricity if you have any left over a the end of the month. I call them roll over watts. They don't expire. I went to the duka and asked for cash power and he said yes. He punched in my meter number and waited. Did it again and waited. Then he looked at me and said only one word. Impossible. If someone in the US said that to me I would have many pointed questions. In this cross culture encounter of the third kind, all I could do was walk away. My brain could not even comprehend all the things wrong with the scenario and could not formulate a rebuttal to this single word. He won his argument with one word and no struggle. I had to drive to town and go the the grocery store to by my electricity today.

Well I had many more little humerus stories but I have forgotten many of them and so I suppose that's it for now.

Please continue to pray for us and remember that we do pray for so many of you regularly.

Bless you all and thank you for everything.

Brian